Ness Lee: Sifting of Selves

About the work

“Sifting of Selves is about the feeling of growing into your own belonging, being able to be with yourself in your own stillness as you spill into place.” – Ness Lee 

Our surroundings have the power to shape our worlds and impact how we make a place for ourselves within a shared environment. Our surroundings influence our feelings and inform our behaviours. Responding directly to the gallery’s interior architecture, artist Ness Lee invites us to consider how we are positioned within public space and reflect on the care needed by individuals and communities to feel welcome. The curving, intertwined figures in Lee’s mural envelop us as we move up the staircase towards the galleries, reminding us to be gentle with our many selves and each other.

About the Artist

Ness Lee (she/they) is a Chinese-Hakka Canadian born in 1989. Studying at The Ontario College of Art and Design, they have received their Bachelor of Design in Illustration. Based in Toronto, their work has been shown in institutions such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, the Gardiner Museum, the  Art Gallery of Hamilton, as well as galleries in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, Taiwan, Montreal and Toronto. Lee has also participated in mural festivals in Canada and Internationally in Hyderabad, India and Cozumel, Mexico. 

Lee draws upon personal history and narratives of their diasporic cultural upbringing and identity to their body, language and sexuality. With these embodied experiences, Lee creates tender and surreal illustrations, paintings, sculptures and installations as a language of self-discovery and acceptance. Exploring various states of mind during intimate stages of vulnerability, Lee’s work takes form as an effort in seeking comfort, forgiveness and desire for an end of a self-perpetuated state.